Billion Dollar Charlie takes on the RIAA

Ars sits down with "Billion Dollar Charlie" Nesson, the Harvard Law professor …

Charlie Nesson isn't one for small gestures—the Harvard law professor is known as "Billion Dollar Charlie," after all, and he was one of the lead lawyers in the famous industrial dumping case that became the book (and then the movie) A Civil Action. So when he took on the defense of a 25-year old Boston University physics grad student who was accused of sharing copyrighted music online, the case suddenly promised to be more than usually interesting. It has not disappointed so far.

But it has also seemed like a bit of a circus, what with attempts to depose lawyers from the other side, the filing of official apologies, motions on webcasting the trial, threats of judicial sanctions, and Nesson's desire to record everything—including typically-private lawyer-to-lawyer conference calls. Things grew strange enough that even noted RIAA scourge Ray Beckerman wrote, "To you law students and young lawyers out there; please don't think you can learn anything from this case. Just ignore everything you are seeing from both sides. I have seen more bizarre filings from both sides' lawyers than I would imagine possible."

How the hell am I going to do this? I'm not a trial lawyer.

Is there a method to the madness? We put the question to Professor Nesson, who explained what he hoped to accomplish. In his view, the case is nothing less than a way to have a public discussion on copyright of the sort that we haven't had in the US since the major reworking of the Copyright Act in 1976. And if the US government gets involved, even on the opposing side (as it has), that's a positive development.

"Litigating in cyberspace"

Nancy Gertner, the federal judge handling the case, helped to connect the lawyer-less Joel Tenenbaum with Professor Nesson, who took the case after Gertner asked him to get involved. Nesson's first thought, he tells Ars, was "How the hell am I going to do this? I'm not a trial lawyer."

But as he thought about it, it became clear that such a case could work well as part of his teaching and research. Not only would it provide some Harvard Law students with vital real-world federal lawyering on an issue they cared about, but it would also fit it Nesson's ongoing research agenda on making the 'Net into an educational medium. (Nesson was one of the cofounders of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society ten years ago, and has a long-standing interest in technology. He even maintains a Twitter account.)

Those twin goals drove his decision to press for a full gavel-to-gavel webcast of the trial, something currently tied up in appeals. It also explains why he wants to record everything from Joel's deposition to the lawyers' "meet-and-confers" to phone calls with the judge—who asked him not to do so. (She's capable of "knocking me for a loop," Nesson said.) E-mail traffic is all archived, the meetings with students are recorded, and court documents are being saved and put up on the web.

"We're litigating in cyberspace," Nesson said. "It's like a reality show that we can all be participants in as we go along... It's an incredibly powerful expansion of the idea of teaching."

A national copyright conversation

That's great for the students, but what about Joel Tenenbaum, who runs the risk of fines that could range as high as a million dollars? Nesson certainly intends to make the recording industry prove that Joel did what he is claimed to have done, but the focus of the defense will be on bigger questions. Are massive statutory damages of up to $150,000 per song truly constitutional penalties, or do they fail a test of proportionality to the crime? Is the RIAA's legal campaign, though proceeding as a set of civil suits, really more like a series of criminal cases, which only the government can bring? Is Joel's noncommercial file-sharing simply a type of "fair use"?

These are the questions that Nesson and his students have raised, but they have also been answered by the US government, which filed a brief last week disagreeing with nearly all of Nesson's arguments.

That doesn't bother him, though, because Nesson is of the strong opinion that the US needs a public debate on copyright, a debate that won't truly happen unless the government is involved. "I believe that is a help to us to have the issue of this campaign, which the RIAA has undertaken, made the focus of attention in an argument that has the solicitor general stepping up and representing the position of the United States government," Nesson said.

With the tremendous publicity that the case has received and the fact that academics, rightsholders, and the government are now all invested in the outcome, the Tenenbaum trial could be one way of having that conversation.

"This is an argument that should take place on the 'Net," Nesson said, because the framers of the 1976 copyright overhaul could not even envision the new world brought into being by the Internet. The old tradeoffs and punitive remedies need rethinking, in his view, and abominations like 1998's Copyright Term Extension Act (dubbed the "Mickey Mouse Term Extension Act" by critics, since it made sure that Mickey didn't fall into the public domain) hardly count as a "public conversation."

The government brief defending current law came from the office of the Solicitor General, which represents the government in such cases. Nesson was disappointed that the government's position "differs not a whit" from the Bush administration's, though he holds out the hope that some change may come. The Department of Justice is charged with defending, not creating or altering, US laws, so the filing was not unexpected.

Still, with Nesson's boss Elena Kagan (former dean of Harvard Law) recently confirmed as the new Solicitor General, copyright could conceivably be defended in a different way. Nesson has argued, for example, that statutory damages of the kind sought in the Tenenbaum cause were never envisioned for use against noncommercial file-swappers and kids in dorm rooms. The Department of Justice will defend "the furthest reach of reasonably defensible power of the Congress," as he puts it, but he hoped that applying such damages to people like Joel Tenenbaum might be seen as unreasonable.

Now that Kagan has been confirmed, some change in government interpretation is possible, but by no means guaranteed. And the government brief in the Tenenbaum case was a robust endorsement of the status quo.

Graduated response is the "ultimate closing of the 'Net"

Nesson's involvement in the Tenenbaum case comes at the end of the RIAA's mass litigation strategy. Instead, rightsholders are increasingly bringing pressure on ISPs to implement "graduated response" programs that can cut down on repeat copyright infringers without the delay, cost, and bad PR of thousands and thousands of trials.

Despite the obvious advantages to both rightsholders (potentially far more effective) and to infringers (no letters demanding $4,000 settlements), Nesson doesn't see graduated response as a positive step. "To me it's the ultimate closing of the 'Net," he said. Such proposals divide the world into two groups—users of commercial ISPs, where people can change ISPs if they want, and users of university ISPs. Commercial users face a reality where "bang, you're booted" off the Internet, while universities will be squeezed for lump-sum payments to cover student swapping. (Choruss appears to be an example of this latter approach, though details are still being worked out.)

The situation is a bit too controlled by one set of users (in this case, media copyright holders), and Nesson sees parallels to the world of control being built by Google through things like Google Book Search.

This isn't surprising coming from a man who in 2007 publicly told the RIAA to "take a hike," but can Nesson & Co. really win a case based on constitutional challenges to copyright law and damage awards? We'll know this summer when the case goes to trial, but it's already clear that Nesson will have to stand up to both the recording industry and the government. And should the case show signs of truly becoming a key copyright battle, expect every major voice on all sides of the copyright question to weigh in as well. If he wanted a conversation about copyright and statutory damages, Nesson looks well on his way to getting it; having it come out his way might be another matter.

21 Reader Comments

One of the primary functions of any government is to preserve the enshrined status quo, whatever it may be, right or ultimately wrong. It's not surprising, then, that the Federal government would take an interest in this case and volunteer an opinion. A lot of us happen to think that status quo needs to be changed with respect to so-called intellectual property (at the least). It's the job and collective duty of all of us - to ourselves - with the help of skilled muckrakers and instigators like Nesson, to see that the status quo gets changed. Our opponents are an equally skilled minority of incredibly self-interested individuals who will stop at literally nothing to maintain and extend their ability to "osmose" money from their fellow (at least in name) citizens.

Originally posted by VulcanTourist:One of the primary functions of any government is to preserve the enshrined status quo, whatever it may be, right or ultimately wrong. It's not surprising, then, that the Federal government would take an interest in this case and volunteer an opinion.

Uh, no...they didnt volunteer. Nesson brought the DoJ in when he argued that the damages are unconstitutional.

quote:

A lot of us happen to think that status quo needs to be changed with respect to so-called intellectual property (at the least).

We have a process for that in a democracy, its called voting. 'A lot' is a meaningless statement and quite frankly, there's nothing wrong with intellectual property in my opinion.

quote:

It's the job and collective duty of all of us - to ourselves - with the help of skilled muckrakers and instigators like Nesson, to see that the status quo gets changed.

Court cases are a very poor way to achieve change, at best they could limit damages in isolated cases, if you want to change anything then you need to change the law. Nesson' lives in an academic Utopia it would seem, I think he drank too much Web 2.0 Kool-Aid.

quote:

Our opponents are an equally skilled minority of incredibly self-interested individuals who will stop at literally nothing to maintain and extend their ability to "osmose" money from their fellow (at least in name) citizens.

Yes, all the people who work in any field where intellectual property is an issue, and you'd be surprised how many there are of such 'incredibly self-interested individuals' like me who work for engineering companies for instance who's livelyhood entirely depends on their ability to think up smarter solutions then the competition can. We dont want to become unemployed, I know, bad huh?

Intellectual property goes a bit beyond pirating mp3's and movies, it would be nice to keep that in mind.

Originally posted by Tijger:Yes, all the people who work in any field where intellectual property is an issue, and you'd be surprised how many there are of such 'incredibly self-interested individuals' like me who work for engineering companies for instance who's livelyhood entirely depends on their ability to think up smarter solutions then the competition can. We dont want to become unemployed, I know, bad huh?

Intellectual property goes a bit beyond pirating mp3's and movies, it would be nice to keep that in mind.

You do realise that the whole point of copyright and IP was to promote creation and spread technical advances? Do you honestly think that someone will decide not to do music due to the fact that their copyright is not 95 years compared to 65 (I think it was 65 before the latest hike)? For the patent cases we can already see that they are mainly used to limit the competition and not much else.

The whole thing needs to get cut down and have forced fair licencing (as in everybody gets same rates.

On the other hand I can see how big multinationals don't like such changes. They have more and more power with ever expanding copyright so of course they are against it but the whole thing was there to benefit the society and not few rich assholes.

Originally posted by VulcanTourist:One of the primary functions of any government is to preserve the enshrined status quo, whatever it may be, right or ultimately wrong. It's not surprising, then, that the Federal government would take an interest in this case and volunteer an opinion.

Uh, no...they didnt volunteer. Nesson brought the DoJ in when he argued that the damages are unconstitutional.

quote:

A lot of us happen to think that status quo needs to be changed with respect to so-called intellectual property (at the least).

We have a process for that in a democracy, its called voting. 'A lot' is a meaningless statement and quite frankly, there's nothing wrong with intellectual property in my opinion.

Note that it's entirely reasonable to think that the status quo needs to be changed wrt intellectual property and to also think that the concept isn't the problem, in itself. I don't know how Vulcan Tourist feels about it, but I most certainly don't think that copyrights or patents should be done away with. I do think that major revisions to their structure would benefit society (including the IP holders).

which brings us to...

quote:

Tijger:

quote:

It's the job and collective duty of all of us - to ourselves - with the help of skilled muckrakers and instigators like Nesson, to see that the status quo gets changed.

Court cases are a very poor way to achieve change, at best they could limit damages in isolated cases, if you want to change anything then you need to change the law.

The biggest problem, IMO, is that changing the law is actually insufficient. Not only would one need to change US law, one would also need to change the law in all areas where you wanted to have similar rights (essentially the entire developed world), and change the international treaties (e.g. Berne conventions) which place surprisingly strong constraints on what's allowable wrt national 'IP' law. For example, the Berne conventions (which the US is now a signatory of) prohibit mandatory registration requirements for copyrights. So, if I wanted to re-instate such a requirement here in the US, it's not enough for me to change US law, I get to try and change (or persuade the US to back out of) international treaties as well. Good luck with that.

Note that I'm not advocating (here) any particular position on 'IP'. I'm simply pointing out that your retorts to Vulcan Tourist oversimplify the situation to the extent that they don't really apply to the real world.

We have a process for that in a democracy, its called voting. 'A lot' is a meaningless statement and quite frankly, there's nothing wrong with intellectual property in my opinion.

And the corporations have a process called lobbying. Your voting does not and cannot influence lobbying, yet lobbying has a major impact on US policies and laws. In other places, using money to influence government would be called bribery.

quote:

Yes, all the people who work in any field where intellectual property is an issue, and you'd be surprised how many there are of such 'incredibly self-interested individuals' like me who work for engineering companies for instance who's livelyhood entirely depends on their ability to think up smarter solutions then the competition can. We dont want to become unemployed, I know, bad huh?

Then you should know quite well that companies who exist solely to sue others for use of their "patents" - aka Patent Trolls - are a perversion of the current IP system and a sign it needs to change.

Music corporations are the same people who say that if you want to use music that you bought on CD in your MP3 player, you need to purchase a second copy. Are you sure you want these guys to have such an influence on IP law?

As far as I understand, the whole point of IP is to allow the original creator or inventor to make a lot of money and possibly fame from his creation for a certain number of years, before passing it into the public domain so that everybody can benefit from it. I'm not so sure that this goal is what most record companies have in mind.

Im working on a patent for my company right now. The sole purpose of the patent is to basically harass other companies in the field Im working in. Often the conversations about patents center around how to "lock out" or "box in" the competition.

Though this is anecdotal, I firmly believe the spirit of the patent has been warped into a tool of destruction, and not for creation.

Then you should know quite well that companies who exist solely to sue others for use of their "patents" - aka Patent Trolls - are a perversion of the current IP system and a sign it needs to change.

No, it's a sign we need to punish Patent Trolls. it is one thing if a guy working in his garage invents something, can't finance mass production, and gets ripped off by a corporation who can but refuse to pay him for his patent/invention. It is another when you are a company that patents everything and anything, or buys them up, and then just sits on it waiting for the right opportunity to make a bundle.

Thing is all the tech sites, and people like Neeson or yourself says "we need to make changes to IP Law" when we really don't. We need Judges to do their job and handle things on a "case by case" basis as they are supposed to.

Guy goes to sue a company for something he legitamately invented and simply can't finance production for? Find for the plaintiff. Patent Troll goes to sue a company for something that is not really an invention, or something he mearly bought off of someone else to sit on it? Then find for the defendent and award the defendent Lawyer fees, and charge the plaintiff fines for wasting the court's time. Which would fix the issue pretty rapidly. The thing is we are choosing judges based on political sides and favors, not because they actually have wisdom and common sense. And so we get what we have today, minimum penalties when none should be needed, a "one size fits all" legal system that simply says "If X, Y and Z then finding equals A" which was never how our court system was supposed to work. It was supposed to be: take in all the facts, and the Judge makes a decision based on previous cases, his own reasoning and wisdom.

The problem is not with IP Law the problem is with the Judges/legal system.

Then you should know quite well that companies who exist solely to sue others for use of their "patents" - aka Patent Trolls - are a perversion of the current IP system and a sign it needs to change.

No, it's a sign we need to punish Patent Trolls. it is one thing if a guy working in his garage invents something, can't finance mass production, and gets ripped off by a corporation who can but refuse to pay him for his patent/invention. It is another when you are a company that patents everything and anything, or buys them up, and then just sits on it waiting for the right opportunity to make a bundle.

Thing is all the tech sites, and people like Neeson or yourself says "we need to make changes to IP Law" when we really don't. We need Judges to do their job and handle things on a "case by case" basis as they are supposed to.

Guy goes to sue a company for something he legitamately invented and simply can't finance production for? Find for the plaintiff. Patent Troll goes to sue a company for something that is not really an invention, or something he mearly bought off of someone else to sit on it? Then find for the defendent and award the defendent Lawyer fees, and charge the plaintiff fines for wasting the court's time. Which would fix the issue pretty rapidly.

It would also put everyone at the mercy of the individual values and 'wisdom' of the judge of the case. Unless, of course, there was some criterion (written in, for example, a law) that gave the judge a way of deciding an issue. That would be called 'rule of law' and might bear some resemblance to the US legal system.

Or do you have evidence that judges are doing anything other than following the law in their decisions?

Court cases are a very poor way to achieve change, at best they could limit damages in isolated cases, if you want to change anything then you need to change the law. Nesson' lives in an academic Utopia it would seem, I think he drank too much Web 2.0 Kool-Aid.

In the US, court cases have a lot more potential to change things than just with regard to isolated cases. There have been cases where court rulings have had substantial effect by striking down laws, as well as cases where the precedent set in a court decision regarding how a law could be applied has had substantial effect (such as challenges to a law's validity, or laws for which different parties dramatically disagreed on what the law met).

"Instead, rightsholders are increasingly bringing pressure on ISPs to implement "graduated response" programs that can cut down on repeat copyright infringers without the delay, cost, and bad PR of thousands and thousands of trials."

Thats something that should not be allowed. Once they get their hooks in the ISP they will have what amounts as a stranglehold on the internet. Can you imagine what would happen if these 'rightsholders' were to suddenly decide that a competing some-thing-or-other amounted to infringement and tied the case up in court for years trying to get a resolution? Not only would the ISP be bound by any agreement but it would affect the users as they got blocked from accessing this new some-thing-or-other, and lack of users/buyers/customers for this new some-thing-or-other product would kill the company.

The article speaks of 'rightsholders' - but aren't we really talking about big content here.

I think; The real intent of all this stuff with the 'rightsholders' and the RIAA interaction with the ISP's is to get contracts and agreements in place with the ISP that can be enforced in a court which in effect gives the 'rightsholders' a captive controlled audience to sell their own products to.

Then you should know quite well that companies who exist solely to sue others for use of their "patents" - aka Patent Trolls - are a perversion of the current IP system and a sign it needs to change.

No, it's a sign we need to punish Patent Trolls. it is one thing if a guy working in his garage invents something, can't finance mass production, and gets ripped off by a corporation who can but refuse to pay him for his patent/invention. It is another when you are a company that patents everything and anything, or buys them up, and then just sits on it waiting for the right opportunity to make a bundle.

Thing is all the tech sites, and people like Neeson or yourself says "we need to make changes to IP Law" when we really don't. We need Judges to do their job and handle things on a "case by case" basis as they are supposed to.

Guy goes to sue a company for something he legitamately invented and simply can't finance production for? Find for the plaintiff. Patent Troll goes to sue a company for something that is not really an invention, or something he mearly bought off of someone else to sit on it? Then find for the defendent and award the defendent Lawyer fees, and charge the plaintiff fines for wasting the court's time. Which would fix the issue pretty rapidly. The thing is we are choosing judges based on political sides and favors, not because they actually have wisdom and common sense. And so we get what we have today, minimum penalties when none should be needed, a "one size fits all" legal system that simply says "If X, Y and Z then finding equals A" which was never how our court system was supposed to work. It was supposed to be: take in all the facts, and the Judge makes a decision based on previous cases, his own reasoning and wisdom.

The problem is not with IP Law the problem is with the Judges/legal system.

Let me check if I am interpreting your stance correctly here: we don't need reform to IP laws despite the gross obesity of their terms, we just need to arbitrarily smack down which ever side is "in the wrong" on the cases as they are brought forth?

I'm sorry, but Patent Trolls are legally in the right. That is why they are so horrible. There is no basis in law, no precedent at all to allow any judge to determine "well, you guys hold the patent, but you didn't actually invent the item, ergo you're going to lose this case." That isn't a case of smarter judges, that's a case of morally dictating judges. Last I checked, we're supposed to avoid such things in a court of law and stick to what is legal and what is Constitutional.

IP law reform needs to be had for the sole reason that the terms are too long before releasing content to public domain, and that original artists/inventors of the works are too often on the losing end of the patent cases for trying to get control of their own works from trolls (or trolls having patents that aren't even valid). There is a plethora of reasoning for IP reform, I think. Until that reform comes about, judges are pretty well limited in their scope of rulings due to the wording of the law.

The real loser in all of this, unfortunately, is likely to be Mr. Tenebaum.

Perhaps nobody informed him that Professor Nesson is regarded by much of legal academia and the legal profession as Harvard's resident crackpot. For whatever brilliance he possessed as a legal scholar at some point -- the quality of his contributions and work in areas like evidence law are not in dispute -- he has long since moved comfortably into the realm of academic sideshow. Professor Nesson is, unfortunately, so out of touch with reality that it's hard to imagine what prudent person would seek his representation in a case like this, where the master plan is to make a circus of the lawsuit and a public vehicle for Mr. Nesson's own musings on copyright law, rather than providing the best legal advice and outcome for the defendant.

That this has become the situation comes as no shock to anyone already familiar with Professor Nesson's well documented antics. From his truly bizarre video preview for a class on cybermedia, in which he appears to channel Christopher Walken's diction and meter, to his interviews with the Harvard Record about smoking pot before teaching class, weird emails to students opining on the quality of Jamaican marijuana, and torts classes in which students learn nothing about torts but something about counting purple bricks around Harvard, Professor Nesson's activities, in the words of one academic, "really give tenure a bad name."

So whatever the merits of debating the nature of copyright, or the utility of its implementation in the U.S., if you're actually the person being sued for infringement, I'm not sure I would recommend turning your representation over the Professor Nesson when he pitches the idea of teaching a class with your case. I suppose free is (probably) better than nothing, if that's all you can afford. But good luck, Joel Tenenbaum. You're going to need it.

Tijger, I think you'll find that most folks will agree with you - to an extent, but tell you what... Let's get back to the original term limits of I believe 14 years. That's more than enough time to profit off of IP.

So, if you want to remain employed then you can come up with new stuff during that time, and with luck the same term limits will be applied to it. The competition gets to do the same. After 14 years, it's public domain and you'll need to come up with something new to market if you want to profit. Simple.

UWSalt posted:

quote:

For whatever brilliance he possessed as a legal scholar at some point -- the quality of his contributions and work in areas like evidence law are not in dispute -- he has long since moved comfortably into the realm of academic sideshow. Professor Nesson is, unfortunately, so out of touch with reality ...<snip>

Not saying Nelson is the finest choice, but I mean come on now... I think it's blindingly obvious that as the term limits stand now, they are embarrassingly out of touch. That's what's out of touch.

I mean what the fuck was Sonny Bono smoking?

It's astonishing that the whole system has been able to become so corrupt; likely having the exact opposite effect it was originally intended.

>Court cases are a very poor way to achieve change, at best they could limit damages in isolated cases, if you want to change anything then you need to change the law.

Law doesn't end with legislation, it begins there. Court cases - particularly those that end up in apellate court -- have a strong influence on the rule of law.

But irrespective of the arguments propounded above, the law really does need an overhaul to deny the excesses we've seen. My personal belief is that certification of ownership of the IP should begin /and end/ with the originator of the IP, that is, not be transferable to "heirs and assigns". If the holder of the copyright could not transfer ownership, there would be no RIAA to misrepresent them. Clearly we're talking about abstract entities, not tangible objects, and if you don't have IP to kick around after the originator has moved on (passed away, rather), on the exchange and development of ideas would free up and the originator wouldn't be out of pocket.

Originally posted by Ed M.:Not saying Nelson is the finest choice, but I mean come on now... I think it's blindingly obvious that as the term limits stand now, they are embarrassingly out of touch. That's what's out of touch.

I wasn't commenting on the validity or reasonableness of copyright laws as they are, or even on Professor Nesson's contentions about them. The problem is that he's representing someone in a real lawsuit, with real consequences for that individual. Whether he is right, normatively or from a policy standpoint, as to copyright term or statutory damages is neither here nor there -- the case for Mr. Tenenbaum is going to rest on the validity of the legal arguments advanced and on whether Professor Nesson can competently prosecute the suit. That doesn't seem to be something that Professor Nesson has much interest in. Instead, he seems to be using the suit as a publicity draw to discuss his musings on copyright policy. That may or may not be interesting or of any value, but it doesn't do his client much good, especially if Professor Nesson is so out of the loop in terms of dealing with the court or managing basic issues of procedure that he ends up getting sanctioned or losing the case on what would amount to malpractice.

As I say, one need only look at his antics over the past several years to realize that Professor Nesson has often seemed rather indifferent to the expectations that others have of him in his professional capacity. The running theme for Nesson in seemingly everything he does is wanting to get people involved in a discussion about whatever it is he happens to be interested in at the moment. That's well and good except that it often appears to come at the expense of whatever the underlying event is, whether that's a class he's teaching or a lawsuit he's filing. Most people taking a class on torts expect to learn something about torts, not try to decipher Nesson's musings about epistemology or argue about purple bricks around the law school. Likewise, people being represented in court usually would like to win their lawsuit, not turn it into a public forum for a discussion about copyright policy in the abstract.

Mercifully, on at least one occasion, students taking their required first year law classes at Harvard were spared Nesson's, ahem, unique approach to teaching from being forcibly inflicted on them (although maybe that's changed again more recently). Note again that Nesson seems mostly concerned with turning whatever issue he's involved with into a "pedagogic moment," whether or not it makes sense to do so and seemingly without regard for the underlying issue. The guy is legend in the academic community, there's no doubt about that. But it's not clear that it's the sort of legend that you want as your lawyer in court. I'm sure he's an interesting guy to talk to and a good time out for beer -- I haven't met him personally -- but I'm not sure I'd put him in any position of real responsibility and I'd certainly think twice about making him my lawyer in a lawsuit where I'm facing significant monetary penalties and his master strategy seems to revolve around turning my trial into another pedagogic moment that may or may not have anything to do with the legal problems that I have.

Professor Nesson is the FreeRadical* of Harvard's law faculty.

That second article from The Record has some real gems in it, by the way. My favorite:

quote:

Nesson's students have been "taking what they get" all along. Just look at last week's class schedule. A week ago, his section was finishing writing reviews of a book about fen-phen and would someday vote for the "top ten" reviews. By Friday, Nesson had skipped town for a long weekend in Jamaica. By Sunday, he had written an incoherent e-mail sent -- yep -- after smoking some pot, he said. By Monday, the Weld Professor of Law had sent his Torts class on a scavenger hunt, to discuss how many HLS buildings have purple bricks.

All the while, I was busy asking everyone the perennial Charlie Nesson question: Is there a method to the madness?

Plenty of Nesson's past and present students insistently say no. Nesson, they say, is "selfish" or "lazy" or "whacked," just "an old man bored with his job."

But other students see something else. Coming out of their Torts lecture, they'll tell you Nesson wants to teach about perspective, or to show that the lawyer is really a storyteller, or to implore that students be active participants in the legal process. These students might be on to something. Because I think Charlie Nesson is our "Man on the Moon."

1. RIAA wants records from ISP but doesn't want to leave a record of what they say/do? Are they trying to hide something? What's wrong with recording and posting things that go on in courts for people to see? After all, the end result may/will affect nearly everyone.

2. Copyright is being hoarded by corporations (especially music). If they truly believe that performer should benefit, then copyright should only last lifetime of the performer. Why should the corporation benefit from a performer that is now dead? Why don't they publish music of people long gone? It should be illegal to draft agreements that allows corporation's to own the art after performer is dead. It is all about the performers, right? At least that is what RIAA is saying. So why don't they act like it? Why isn't the law set up that way? Why agreements not being set up that way? Oh, wait, it's not about the performers - it's about corporation making money hand over fist because of the performers.

More power to him I say. Down with the who copyright system as it is now since the public was shafted by the industry and government. The system was put in place to protect the public and promote creativity not to create multigenerational revenue streams and lock everything out of two or three generations of peoples reach.